Nine year old son Newley diagnosed with crohns

Welcome to HW. Don't think for a second that posting here would ever be considering anything even remotely close to a "bother".

I'm very sorry that you're having such a tough time with your son. It's always more difficult with young children. My own Daughter was diagnosed at 13yrs. of age.

It's so tough to be patient because as a parent, you want to get your son feeling better. Unfortunately, the diagnostics are very necessary, and can take time to get done. You really need the colonoscopy, as they will take biopsies, and this is really the only way to confirm a Crohn's diagnosis. An MRE is nothing to worry about all, get it done as well. It's a very concise look, and not invasive at all, so get it done.

The meds can all seem very scary when you first get diagnosed. You will find that in time, they are a lot safer now than your research would have you believe. I'm not trying to suggest that there aren't valid concerns, but this disease left untreated will prove to be way more scary than the meds could ever be.

As for getting your son better, I'm surprised that your GI hasn't prescribed a course of Prednisone. I'm sure that as soon as they can confirm a diagnosis, that this will follow. Prednisone can work very fast to get his symptoms under control. It's good is used infrequently and for 8-12 weeks at most. Many think that Prednisone is safer than the state of the art drugs we have now, but it's actually one of the worst.

I know that as a Mom you're very likely extremely upset. It's so tough to be patient right now, but try to understand that the treatments for Crohn's have improved immensely over the last 10+ years. There are new meds coming out all the time now. Your son has a very good chance at getting things under control, and resuming a very normal life.

Keep posting your questions. There are many experienced people on this forum that will be glad to help. Good luck, hope things improve soon.

Hello & welcome to Healing Well. So sorry to read about your son's situation. 73Monte gave you some very wise words of wisdom. I urge you to think about what she has written. As a mother, yes we can get scared when something like this involves our children. This is where you need to educate yourself about this disease & the medications used to treat it. You really need to keep an open mind. Your goal should be to get your son healthy again & crohns in remission. From what you have described at this point, he does not have a mild case of crohns. I urge you to check out CCFA.org & read about crohns & the medications there. It is an excellent site with accurate information. There is a lot of garbage on the internet with useless information.

Keep us posted on how your son is doing. Take care.

Firstly, I'm sorry about your son's diagnosis. It's sh!t when a child gets this crappy disease. But also, I just wanted to second Charlie's suggestion of enteral nutrition. With a child, I would try that before I would try steroids. He doesn't need to be on said diet permanently because, let's face it, it's not a whole lot of fun for a child. But it's worth trying for a few weeks/months just to (hopefully) get the immediate flare-up under control.

Again, I understand your doubts about the Humira but it sounds like your boy has severe disease to be honest :-/ For whatever it's worth, Humira is safer than long-term prednisone: a lot, lot safer.

Meanwhile, if you need to convince your GI that enteral nutrition is the way to go, here is an article you can print off to show him.

/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4462720/